"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - The Questing Mind" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

and quivering with age: It's wrong, Reed. Please. Don't ask me again.

As he closes his eyes now, he hears that voice, gone now almost two years and
still buried inside him. Don't ask me. Please, Reed. Please. He has a sense of
disquiet, as if the dreams have told him something he should understand. He
allows his mind to free associate, as the technicians have told him to.

He is not asleep, but he is not awake, either. Finally the answer comes to him,
firmly and with strength, his mind speaking with confidence for the first time
since this ordeal began.

The visual memory is gone, but the audio remains.

He has been trying too hard. He needs to remember with his body, not with his
mind.

This test is done, and the techs take him to another room, attach him to another
machine. He barely notices; he is too engaged reviewing his small store of
memories. The wobble of his legs brought back the children; the warmth of the
solarium brought him Olive. Other memories are subtler: the taste of canned
gravy brought the years of his young marriage and the boy Scott to his mind; the
expression in Scott's eyes reviving for a brief instant Reed's father. The body
is a link to a secondary store of memories, one he accesses in a different way
than simple recall.

They complete two more tests before lunch. After lunch, the techs warn him, is
the frightening part. They assure him he will feel nothing.

They take him to another white room, this one with a lounge and a series of
wires hanging over it, like an old- fashioned dental chair. A young woman straps
him in, explaining in a cheery voice that he has been through this once before.
He has minute scars to prove it. Then she uses a tiny needle to inject a
solution into his skull.

She is right; he feels nothing. Occasionally he makes an involuntary movement --
a toe wiggles, a finger twitches -- but otherwise he seems to be in control of
himself. Over lunch, the techs tried to explain the process to him, using words
like Virtual Imaging and Composite Mapping, but the jargon passes him too
quickly. He will have Rodriguez explain, later.

When she finishes, she takes him to a room and lets him sleep much needed,
dreamless rest. He does not see Rodriguez until the following morning.

Reed is still exhausted. They meet in Rodriguez's office, a cramped room piled
with print-outs and curling photographs, X-rays, and photographs of the brain.
Computers hum on three desks. Framed degrees proclaim Rodriguez a medical doctor
as well as a computer scientist. Magazine covers hide the part of the wall not
covered with bookshelves. If Reed squints, he can see the Scientific American
cover with the map of his brain.